


A Hundred Ways

by M3zzaTh3M3z



Category: Widdershins (Webcomic)
Genre: Demisexual Character, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Sex, Making Out, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:42:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21633850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/pseuds/M3zzaTh3M3z
Summary: There are so many ways to say 'I love you' and Ben seems to be working his way through them all.
Relationships: Eliza Swift/Ben Thackerey
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	A Hundred Ways

**Author's Note:**

> The M rating is maybe a bit strong but I just wanted to make sure!

It begins in early Spring.

They’ve been courting for a few months now, and they’re strolling hand in hand through the park, something that still makes Eliza’s chest swell with happiness. She's in the middle of telling him about the migration pattern of geese (it had come up during her Fourth Anchor research) but trails off as she realises Ben’s watching her with this slightly dazed and utterly soft smile and he probably hasn’t heard a word.

"Penny for ya thoughts?" she asks, squeezing his hand playfully.

He blinks, then squeezes back. "Actually, I..." The frosty air has given his cheeks a rosy glow but they redden further as his grip on her hand tightens. "I was thinking that I–" He falters, and swallows, eyes bobbing down then up again to gaze at her with absolute tenderness, and then he says the words that start it all. "I just wanted to say that I love you."

"I love you," he mutters, a tad awkward and stiff as she pulls him into a tight hug at the railway station. When on the case she'd thought of nothing else, but as soon as it was solved she could hardly wait to see him again. Now, after a week, it feels good to have him back in her arms.

"Oh, I love you," he says, looking up from his book with a grateful smile as she hands him his third cuppa that night.

_I love you xxx_ he leaves in his perfectly neat script in the corner of her blackboard, and Charles laughs when he notices in the middle of a meeting but Eliza draws a little DNE box around it anyway.

"I love you," he declares with the biggest grin, flustered and delighted as he surfaces from the long, deep kiss she surprised him with, then he leans back in again for more.

"I love you," he promises in her kitchen at two in the morning, his fingers through her hair soothing the storm inside her head, his voice drowning out the cruel words and disdain of once-loved ones she thought she was long past loving.

"I– _ah!_ –I love you–" he gasps, hips squirming beneath her as the words slip away into a moan. Eliza’s not quite sure how she ended up straddling him on a park bench in the dark—they’d kissed once or twice and the next thing she knew he was pulling her onto him—but she was more than happy to be there. Even after seeing each other for a fair while they’ve rarely done more than kiss, but recently he ventured he’s started to feel things for her he never has before. If this is how he wants to explore that then, well, she sure isn’t going to complain. She breaks away from nipping the sensitive spot below his jaw just long enough to shush a reminder to keep quiet, then goes right back to the love bite she’s having a lot of fun with. From the sound of it, Ben’s having a lot of fun too.

"I – I love you," he stammers, flushing red the way she finds adorable and knows he hates but secretly loves that she loves. For once she doesn’t tease him though, because she knows this is difficult for him, saying it in front of O'Malley and Wolfe for the first time. From the corner of her eye she sees O'Malley pull a face and Wolfe nudges him, so when Wolfe is definitely not looking she flips O'Malley the bird. He returns it with a grin. She never minds his complaining about them being ‘daft an’ soppy’ because if Ben’s 'soppy bubbles' are really half so annoying as O'Malley makes out, then Eliza is the luckiest girl in Widdershins.

"I love you," he tells her again and again as she clings to him in the tear sodden aftermath of another noose-swing nightmare.

"I love you," he murmurs by way of thanks, nestled in her arms as she brushes away the nightmares with each stroke of his hair, softly lit by the first rays of dawn creeping in through the window.

"I love you," he murmurs to her ear, his hair brushing her neck as his warm body curls against her bare back, still slightly sweat-slick from twenty minutes ago when he'd been saying it a lot, quicker, with a lot more desperation and moans and other lovely things, but now, with their legs lying still, still tangled beneath the covers, Eliza knows he means it no less.

"Eliza, I love you, but–" he begins, and before he can spell out exactly why her latest Anchor theory is ridiculous she's already started her rebuttal because she knows her Ben and how he will argue. As she speaks he starts to smile and she knows he loves their debates, loves _winning_ for sure, but most of all he loves watching her mind at work and when he looks at her like that, Eliza knows she can do anything.

"I love you," he whispers, taking her hand as the climax of Wolfe's performance swells, and maybe fifty couples in music hall audience do just the same, but she knows none of them did half so well.

"I love you, have a good day," he says and goes up on tiptoes to kiss her cheek before heading off to work. As soon as the door swings shut there’s a loud ‘aww!’ and she turns around to glare at Will, who is leaning against the counter with a smirk, and Knotty, who’s innocently pretending to read his book. She barks an order for Knotty to keep his troublemaker under control, but he looks at her with these big sappy eyes and she can tell its a lost cause, and finds she doesn't really mind all that much.

"I love you," he reminds her every morning, every night, regular as clockwork. Not through routine replacing sincerity, but because that's how he proves his sincerity, by creating and maintaining these little routines in defiance of the turbulent forces that continually buffet their lives.

_I love you_ — three words, again and again, a hundred forms, an unchanging core.

“I know,” she’s always been able to reply, in hundreds of ways of her own. “I know, and I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> don't ask where that came from, I don't know either! I just want soft Benliza! Please let me know what you thought <3


End file.
